Top 10 Mistakes When Building and Maintaining a Database

Building and maintain a SQL Server database environment takes a lot of work. There are many things to consider when you are designing, supporting and troubleshooting your environment. This article identifies a top ten list of mistakes, or things that sometimes are overlooked when supporting a database environment.


http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3906986/Top-10-Mistakes-When-Building-and-Maintaining-a-Database.htm

Managing Data Growth in SQL Server

'Help, my database ate my disk drives!'. Many DBAs spend most of their time dealing with variations of the problem of database processes consuming too much disk space. This happens because of errors such as incorrect configurations for recovery models, data growth for large objects and queries that overtax TempDB resources. Rodney describes, with some feeling, the errors that can lead to this sort of crisis for the working DBA, and their solution.

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/managing-data-growth-in-sql-server/?utm_source=simpletalk&utm_medium=email&utm_content=DataGrowth-20100125&utm_campaign=SQL

Eating SQL Server Installations for Breakfast

Here you will find wholesome SQL Server installations on the menu, complete with Express, Continental and Deluxe breakfast choices, depending on your application’s appetite. This is the article where your new SQL Server installation is completely yours, having not as yet been turned over to the general populace of developers or users. Enjoy it while you can: From the SQL Server Tacklebox

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/eating-sql-server-installations-for-breakfast/

Laying out SQL Code

It is important to ensure that SQL code is laid out the best way for the team that has to use and maintain it. Before you work out how to enforce a standard, one has to work out what that standard should be for the application. So do you dive into detail or create an overall logic to the way it is done?

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/laying-out-sql-code/

Uncovering Exchange 2010 Database Availability Groups (DAGs) (Part 2)

In this part of this multi-part series, I will provide the steps necessary in order to prepare two servers to be used in a two DAG member solution. Both Exchange 2010 servers are placed in the same Active Directory site in the same datacenter.

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/uncovering-exchange-2010-database-availability-groups-dags-part2.html

Uncovering Exchange 2010 Database Availability Groups (DAGs) (Part 1)

What an Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG) is all about and how this high availability feature may fit into your Exchange 2010 organization. Providing also step by step instructions on how to deploy DAG and other best practice recommendations.

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2010/high-availability-recovery/uncovering-exchange-2010-database-availability-groups-dags-part1.html

Free Tools for the SQL Server DBA Part 2

Welcome to the second edition of "Free Tools for the SQL Server DBA". It has been a while since the original article was published in May 2007. Since that time, the number of free tools for SQL Server has continued to grow even though some have disappeared. This article covers tools not included in the original article.

All tools listed are free with no known expiration date. In order to download them, some sites will require you to register which might result in a phone call or e-mail from the vendor. Some tools are free versions of vendor's purchasable software with features disabled. While others tools are on par or better than what you can purchase.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Tools/64908/

Database Indexing Development Lifecycle...Say What?

This is the first article of a series where I’ll be exploring Indexing Guidelines. Having appropriate indexes on your database is critical in making sure your application is retrieving records quickly. However, having too many indexes can also slow down your application. In this series of articles, I hope to help you understand how to determine what columns you should consider for indexes, and how those columns should be used in indexes to optimize performance. In this first article, I will be discussing the indexing development lifecycle.

Using SSIS to zip files and email the zipped files

This article makes use of global variables throughout and shows how they can be used in SSIS, you can adapt these to make a package that can be made as flexible as you want. The package described here zips all files in a folder to a single archive zip file.

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Integration+Services+(SSIS)/64028/

Pre Check List for 64 BIT SQL Server 2008 Cluster Installation

The purpose of this document is to help in the installation of SQL Server 2008 with tips and guidelines that I have found to work well in my environment. During installation I found missing information that was important for the successful installation of SQL Server 2008 (64 bit) on a Windows 2008 (64 bit) operating system in a cluster.

ReverseDOS - spam filter for ASP.NET sites

ReverseDOS is a very simple HttpModule that checks various parts of incoming requests against a list of crap that you don't want pushed on to your site. If ReverseDOS detects a match, it attempts to stall the requesting client for a number of seconds (specified in a .config file). During this loop, which uses virtually no server resources - and only a tiny smidgen of bandwidth, ReverseDOS checks every .3 seconds to see if the client is still connected. If the spammer disconnects, good riddance. If the spammer sticks around, they're finally rewarded with the Response Headers - containing an HTTP 403 - Access Denied Response Code. (Awwwhh tooo bad...)

http://www.angrypets.com/tools/rdos/

Microsoft Hyper-V Networking and Configuration - Part 1

In the first of a series of articles on Hyper-V Networking, Nirmal explains Hyper-V networking and VLAN tagging, and shows how to set up a Virtual Network switch. Once this is done, the Hyper-V Virtual Network Switches can be used to connect unlimited no. of Virtual Machines.

http://www.simple-talk.com/content/article.aspx?article=884

Upgrade Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010

In this article, the first of two in which Jaap describes how to move from Exchange Server 2003 straight to Exchange Server 2010, he shows what is required before moving mailboxes from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2010. He shows how to upgrade Active Directory, install both Exchange Server 2010 and certificates, and set up the Public Folder replication.

http://www.simple-talk.com/sysadmin/exchange/upgrade-exchange-2003-to-exchange-2010/?utm_source=simpletalkExchange&utm_medium=email&utm_content=UpgradeExchange-20091221&utm_campaign=Exchange

Part II here.

Finding Data Corruption

In this article, taken from Chapter 8 of his new book, SQL Server Tacklebox, Rodney describes how a working DBA goes about troubleshooting data corruption. He demonstrates the tools and scripts required to seek out and fix data corruption in a timely manner, and so prevent it propagating into your backups.

The 10 Things to Do First for Windows 7

AT A GLANCE:

• Getting to know Windows 7
• Dealing with the latest volume-activation requirements
• Developing a roadmap
• Handling new distributed-security features
• Virtualizing desktops and infrastructures
• Removing users' local-admin rights

When you run your thumb down the list of new features and improvements in Windows 7 (see the feature comparison chart at tinyurl.com/win7featuregrid), you're bound to wonder how you're going to get your arms around all that new technology so that you can deliver it to your users without too much disruption.

Following are 10 steps that can help you accomplish that goal.

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2: Bare Metal to Live Migration (In about an hour!)

In this one-off video, Matt McSpirit, Partner Technology Specialist at Microsoft UK, walks through a bare-metal installation of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (RC) on 2 physical nodes, hooks them up to an iSCSI SAN, configures the SAN storage, and then, from a Windows 7 (RC) laptop, validates, and builds a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (RC) Cluster. The end result? A Highly Available, Live Migratable, Virtual Machine!

All in about an hour!!

Getting Real - the smarter, faster, easier way to build a succesful web application

Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.

37signals used the unconventional Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people.

Anyone working on a web app — including entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives, or marketers — will find value, fresh perspectives, and inspiration in this practical book.

Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2008

It’s not uncommon to experience the occasional slowdown of a database running the Microsoft SQL Server database software. The reasons can range from a poorly designed database to a system that is improperly configured for the workload. As an administrator, you want to proactively prevent or minimize problems; if they occur, you want to diagnose the cause and take corrective actions to fix the problem whenever possible. This white paper provides step-by-step guidelines for diagnosing and troubleshooting common performance problems by using publicly available tools such as:

• SQL Server Profiler
• System Monitor (in the Windows Server 2003 operating system) or Performance Monitor (in the Windows Vista operating system and Windows Server 2008), also known as Perfmon
• Dynamic management views (sometimes referred to as DMVs)
• SQL Server Extended Events (Extended Events) and the data collector, which are new in SQL Server 2008.

We have limited the scope of this white paper to the problems commonly seen by Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS), because an exhaustive analysis of all possible problems is not feasible.

Because this paper is very long (102 pages), reading it in an online format such as the Library becomes impractical, so we offer it as a downloadable Microsoft Word document.

A Google-like Full Text Search

Thanks to Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo!, your search application users are more sophisticated and demanding than ever. Your application users have a wealth of search application knowledge that they're probably not even aware of. Ask one of them to find a website dedicated to their favorite band or movie and odds are they'll have their browser pointed to that page in a matter of seconds.

You can tap into the self-education that comes from countless hours spent at home trying to locate information on the Web and turn it to your advantage in your own SQL Server-based search applications. With just a little bit of code you can help reduce your training costs and give your users an easy to use interface that will make them want to use your search applications. In this article I'll explain how to convert Google-style queries to SQL Server's full-text search CONTAINS predicate syntax.

Saving Time with Proactive DBA Monitoring

A typical day for the DBA usually starts with an overall health check of the database servers in the network. No matter how big or small the environment, the database administrator usually finds himself doing more or less the same type of checks every day.

If the DBA is responsible for ten production SQL Server instances, each hosting three databases on average - it would be thirty production databases to look after. Each morning the DBA would want to know if the instances are all up and running and accepting user connections. Next, he would probably want to see if overnight backups were all successful. When that is ascertained, perhaps the attention would turn to scheduled jobs. There may be regular processes that are critical to the business – like an SSIS package or a reporting job. If nothing has failed in that front, it would be time to check the Windows Event Log and the SQL Error Log for any suspicious looking error messages. Finally, it will be prudent to see if replication has failed or mirroring has frozen or log shipping has broken.

These are only part of the day-to-day health checks and yet when done manually, can take a significant amount of time.

There are a number of tasks that you as the DBA can automate to make life easier and save time. Smart DBAs would always try to proactively check database and server health without waiting for something to happen or someone else reporting about them.

In this article I will try to present some ideas about how some of the daily database health checks can be automated and turned into proactive monitoring. Although database monitoring is not a new idea and there are quite a few third party tools in the market, it may be cost prohibitive for some organisations. The alternative is to build a custom monitoring solution.